There and Back Again

For those who don’t already know, I filed my dissertation, We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! The Political Culture of the Communist Youth League, 1918-1928, on Monday. The process of filing was a bureaucratic nightmare in and of itself. Back and forth between UCLA’s Murphy Hall because my middle name, “Christopher” (which I never use, but I somehow put down when I registered at UCLA), was not on the the dissertation. Then two trips to the library to get it checked over by the dissertation lady. What a thankless job that must be! A quite unpleasant, though somewhat charming, woman sits in a small office surrounded by dissertations, goes through each and every page to make sure the margins and typeface are correct. I was told she busts out a ruler but this must be an urban myth. I made a few slip ups and had to go back to the History Department to repair them, then go back to her to get her signature on the appropriate form. Then it was back to Murphy to get my “Certificate of Completion.” It was a journey that started at 10:30, and should have been over by noon at the latest, but ended at 2:30. The last time I experienced this many bureaucratic entanglements was paying for photocopies from the Komsomol archive and dealing with my health insurance provider. But what am I really whining about? After all, at the end of this red-tapist’s wet dream was a PhD. Still, the 1968 slogan “Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat” had renewed relevance.

So what now? Well back to blogging is an immediate goal. I have a lot of catching up to do in the world of Russia, and sadly, as I peruse the hundreds of news stories I’ve neglected over the past several weeks, I am reminded once again how much of the reporting is a rerun of the shame shit over and over again. Will Putin run for President in 2012? Will Medvedev? Who’s really in charge of Russia? Are US-Russia relations hot? Cold? Do they exist? Does Medvedev really like hobnobbing with Obama? Was dropping the missile shield a concession or appeasement, or just the US facing reality? Who really started last year’s war? Georgia? Russia? A pox on both houses! Iran? Is Russia an abettor to who my wife’s grandmother calls the “Second Hitler”*? Or are they on the side of the “good guys” i.e. the West? The specter of Stalin.** Back in vogue or never left the room? What to make of Medvedev’s stinging critique in his manifesto “Forward Russia!”? Does he mean business or was it just yet another empty gesture? Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan are looking like more of a mess everyday. Oh, and by the way, it kinda sucks to be a journalist (please feel free to substitute “human rights activist” or “oppositionist”) in Russia. Um, like, duh?

It is not like these issues aren’t important. They are. It’s just that when you’ve read one, you’ve read it all. There has to be some expectation of new knowledge, or at least a fresh way of looking at it. Sometimes I wonder if journos have a keyword database of ten topics that are randomly spirited to their Blackberries. A word like “Putin” appears and the article flows accordingly. The names change but the narratives always stay the same.

Now, don’t ask me how this rehashing of narratives can be avoided. Its ideological hold is so strong that even its most aware, dogged opponents (of which I include myself) can’t help but be pulled into its vortex. Events in Russia certainly don’t help. But the news filter is so thick and the categories of thought so rigid, that what’s really going on there is impossible to pinpoint. At most, we, who watch and write about the place, are only able to dance around the periphery of truth in an everlasting rendition of the hokey-pokey. Much of our thought about Russia is governed by a silent watchman akin to what Michel Foucault called a “regime of truth.” This regime is backed by a whole host of apparatuses, economic, cultural and political forces, “scientific” knowledge, categories, and rhetorics that are all deployed by a long list of christened “experts.” All of this makes anyone’s attempt to think about Russia otherwise a poster child of deviance: Putin apologist, Kremlin shill, FSB agent, etc. (See the great Anatoly Karlin’s blog for a full list of said deviants.) It is this power over knowledge, or in Foucault’s terms power-knowledge nexus, that engulfs us. It is the reason why I think everyone, Russophile and Russophobe (two categories which already delimit thought), are ultimately engaged in an orientalist project.

As I enter into a new era of intellectual exploration, armed with a degree that is equally revered and vilified, perhaps I can add a few new steps to the hokey-pokey. Perhaps I can inch a bit closer to the truth lurking behind the mystifications that govern the discourse about Russia. It is this modest task that serves as my manifesto.

*I wonder who was the first post-Hitler Hitler. A friend swears that it was Sadat.

**Another friend recently sent me the best Stalin quote ever. Unfortunately, I can’t reveal it all, because, well, it’s an academic thang. Anyway this tidbit should suffice. Stalin on Party appointments based on personal connections in Transcaucasia in 1931:

“If you pick people that way, then they will fuck you up. It’s no good. They will just fuck you up. It’s a chieftain system, totally without a Bolshevik approach to picking people…. But they do it otherwise: who is their friend, who supports them. Everybody says, “we have no disagreements; why fight?” It’s a gang.”

Makes you wonder how different this is from political appointments anywhere.

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Two weeks ago, while waiting for the bus at the corner of Sevastopol’skii and Nakhimovskii prospect, I noticed a big billboard of the Jack and Meg White from The White Stripes. To my surprise they were playing one night in Moscow to promote their new album, Get Behind Me Satan. I excitedly noted down the website to order tickets and promptly did so when I got home. 800 rubles (about $26)? No problem. Considering tickets for their show at the Greek Theater in LA were around $40, I was willing to pay up to $35. Plus seeing the Detroit duo in Moscow added a special incentive. How often can you see the White Stripes in Moscow? I ordered two tickets and told my friend Maya that she was going whether she liked it or not. Surprisingly, I was able to convince two more grad students to plop down the money and join us.

It was raining the day of the show. I hesitate to say night because it doesn’t get dark here until around 11:30 pm. Plus the show started at [7:00], hardly the standard 9:00 pm of shows in the U.S. I assumed the early time was because the Stripes were playing St. Petersburg the next night, which is a good 6 hour train ride from Moscow. Let me tell you, it’s pretty strange leaving a concert and it still be light out. Anyway, yes raining, as it has been off and on for the last two weeks, and when we approached Klub Mekhanika, we came upon a large crowd waiting to get into the show. You could hear five languages emanating from the crowd: Russian, English, German, French, and even some Italian. It took us about 20 minutes to get inside. Luckily, the rain broke into a light drizzle.

Located near metro Avtozavodskaia (Auto factory), Klub Mekhanika is well located but badly placed. Not only does its moniker from the car motif, the place looks like it used to be a giant car garage. It is also adjacent to the “Tret’e transportnoe kol’tso,” or the third ring highway that circles the city. Klub Mekhanika claims to hold 2000 people, but I estimate that there were close to 3000. Plus there is no reason to believe that the Russians abided by any building code, if there are such things. The stuffy air was the combined stench of sweat, cigarette smoke, and Moscow. It was impossible to swim through the thick crowd to reach the middle so we settled to stand in the back. Our glimpses of Jack and Meg were sporadic. The six roof supporting columns and the several Russian girls perched on their man’s shoulders did help the view either. The place was so hot that in the middle of the performance, Jack sarcastically asked, “Do you want us to turn up the heat in here?”

The Stripes started relatively on time, around 7:30. A miracle according to Maya, because when she saw Front 242 there two months ago, they didn’t go on until 9:00. Jack and Meg came up to the roar of the crowd dressed in their trademark attire. Meg was in red pants and sleeveless white shirt. Jack in red pants and a black t-shirt. The only difference was the addition of the top hat he sports on the cover of the new album. Meg thumped her bass drum twice. Jack lightly strummed his guitar and then broke into “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.” At first the sound was shit but was properly leveled by the time they played “Apple Blossom.” I can’t remember the entire track list order, but I remembered that including the aforementioned, they played: Blue Orchid, One More Cup of Coffee, Hotel Yorba, The Hardest Button to Button, The Nurse, Little Ghost, I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet), The Denial Twist, Stop Breaking Down, Passive Manipulation, Red Rain, I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, and Seven Nation Army. “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” was by far the most amazing. The whole crowd sang the chorus, leaving Jack silent. Jack’s responded, “See they can speak English.” It was one of those great concert moments when everyone was in harmony with the band.

Plus, Jack just puts on an amazing performance. He truly becomes possessed by his blues. He runs around, drops to the floor, and writhes with the sounds screeching from his guitar. Meg’s drums were great, despite charges to the contrary by Sasha Frere-Jone’s in an otherwise fair and interesting review of Get Behind Me Satan in the New Yorker.

It was a treasure to see them in Russia. Apparently it wasn’t easy for them to come here. At one point Jack said, “My sister and I always wanted to come and play Russia, but we were told it was too expensive to fly the entire crew and equipment. Well, thanks to many people, especially the people you see around dressed in suits and derbies, we were able to do it, because they volunteered their labor and are working for free. Give them a round of applause. . .” The crowd didn’t disappoint. And neither did Jack and Meg.

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Last night’s Obama-McCain Presidential debate was devoid of surprises. Even Russia had a place. Given “Russia’s resurgence” as they like to say in the news, it becoming a brief focus of the debate isn’t even novel. Before getting to that here of some of my general impressions about last night’s performance.

I’ve struggled to come up with one word to describe this performance and the only one I could come up with was: Boring. I watched the CNN telecast, and the network must have known that boredom would be a factor. They tried to spice things up by plopping on screen their analysts scorecards and a meter at the bottom to register Democrat, Republican, and Independent “real-time” reactions (I’m struck how Independent has attained a discursive function similar the Soviet class category “Прочий” or “Other”).

In fact, it seems that “real time” was marketing tactic since the CNN pregame repeatedly reminded viewers that they could participate by giving their reactions in “real time” on the network’s website. That’s democracy in action, internet style. I suggest that a giant gong be hung for the next debate, where selected audience members can gong it when a candidate becomes boring or stupid. The person with the least amount of gongs wins. Where is Chuck Barris when you need him?

I tuned out after an hour. Jim Lehrer did his best to spice things up by urging the candidates to go tête-à-tête. From the bit I saw, Obama just couldn’t look McCain straight in the face. Perhaps this was out of civility or fear. McCain didn’t look at Obama at all. He seemed unable to turn his head. Maybe this was out of pure disrespect or something to do with his injuries. The old guy is pretty stiff.

One thing I noticed, or really my wife did, was how each candidate was dressed. Both McCain and Obama were colored in the American flag. Obama was in a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie. McCain donned a blue suit, light blue (almost white) shirt, and a red and white striped tie. Red, White, and Blue. Ol’Glory. I can’t help wonder what the psycho-ideological affect this has. Everything is so managed in American democracy that, to invert Freud, sometimes a suit just isn’t a suit.

The democratic realism of it all, the careful effort by each candidate to stay within the bounds of acceptable political speech, while trying to portray his opponent as outside of it, stifled the range of each candidates’ opinions. Most of what each candidate said was predictable, making the debate merely performative. I think this is why Lehrer’s attempts to get them to engage each other fell flat. Each candidate didn’t want to talk to the other because the other was not the object of their words. Their interlocutor was the camera that mediated them and the “American people” or as McCain repeatedly said, “my friends.”

At some point, I think I figured that if I wanted to read restricted political speech, I’ll read a stenograph of a Stalinist Central Committee plenum. Like Stalin and the boys, McCain and Obama’s words were all surface. Whatever deeper meaning they had existed on a mystified genealogy of codes, slogans, gestures, and references. This was best exemplified by the fact that every time Obama said the meme “Bush” the Democrats in the audience pressed their little buttons in approval. Every time McCain said “cut spending” the Republicans responded in unison. The content that followed each of these memes was irrelevant.

Perhaps the whole scriptedness and smooth narratives of each candidate’s words is best revealed in what I did after I switched the plastic people off. I put on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which has been sitting on my DVR for a few weeks. Now that I think of it, maybe my mind needed some kind of drug laden, non-narrative psychedelia to pull me out of the “real world.” Perhaps the stark “unreality” of the incoherent rambling of Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo (played excellently by Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro) was precisely what I needed to pull me out of the “reality” of the Presidential Debate. The irony of it all is quite striking . . .

Nevertheless, I seems that I tuned out to quickly. Russia did get special attention towards the debate’s end. Lehrer asked:

New lead question. Russia, goes to you, two minutes, Senator Obama. How do you see the relationship with Russia? Do you see them as a competitor? Do you see them as an enemy? Do you see them as a potential partner?

Obama was predictable as the sunrise. His words were peppered with the typical adjectives that tend to swirl around the word “Russia.” Words and phrases like “resurgent and very aggressive,” “unacceptable,” unwarranted,” “you cannot be a 21st-century superpower, or power, and act like a 20th-century dictatorship,” “fledgling democracies,” “[Georgia and Ukraine are] free to join NATO,” and “can’t return to a Cold War posture.”

My favorite was the constant reference to Russia and “the way they’ve been behaving.” Can there be a more explicit statement to how Americans see themselves as the Father and all other nations as children that need correction when they misbehave?

McCain didn’t say anything out of the ordinary either. He made references to how “Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia,” was “a nation fueled by petro-dollars that is basically a KGB apparatchik-run government,” “I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes, and I saw three letters, a “K,” a “G,” and a “B,” “their aggression in Georgia is not acceptable behavior,” “I don’t believe we’re going to go back to the Cold War,” “Russian threats to regain their status of the old Russian to regain their status of the old Russian empire, and “the norms of international behavior.”

Is there any difference between these two in regard to Russia? Nope. Nothing. Zilch. Even Obama doesn’t think so. He said, “No, actually, I think Senator McCain and I agree for the most part on these issues.” Wonderful.

However trite their statements about Russia were, there were still some comments worth noting.

Obama:

“[The Russians] have to remove themselves from South Ossetia and Abkhazia.”

Good luck on that one my good Senator. Someone might want to let him know that there is no possibility of that.

Then there was this one:

They have not only 15,000 nuclear warheads, but they’ve got enough to make another 40,000, and some of those loose nukes could fall into the hands of al Qaeda.

Huh?

I was also struck by McCain’s move to political economy when talking about Russia. He said,

And that wasn’t just about a problem between Georgia and Russia. It had everything to do with energy.There’s a pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Georgia through Turkey. And, of course, we know that the Russians control other sources of energy into Europe, which they have used from time to time.

McCain the Marxist. If only a smidgen of this analysis would be applied to America’s own foreign policy, those in Washington would include, as noble prize winning economist Joseph Stigliz does, that Iraq is part of America’s economic insolvency.

In all, my impression of the debate, and the cadidates in general, is best expressed in the sacrosanct words of Dr. Gonzo, “I hate to say this, but this place is getting to me. I think I’m getting the fear”

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My flight back to Moscow was without incident.I slept most of the four hours to Atlanta and some of the ten to Moscow.Believe it or not Delta has direct flights from Atlanta, of all places, to Moscow.I guess its one of the perks of being a main Delta hub.

Ilya, my driver from Sheremetevo to my apartment, was a friendly guy.A bit obsessed with cars, though.I spent the whole one and a half hour ride listening to his various takes on cars.He’s a big Nissan fan (he claimed that he was buying a new one next week), and thought BMW and Mecedes were good in band only, while the cars themselves were shit.When I asked him if Russian cars had any merit, he went on a rant on how they were total shit.When I jokingly suggested that perhaps Russian car companies might disappear in ten years, he added that this would be a good thing.

Yes, cars are the shit in Moscow.They clog the streets, freeways, alleyways, and sometimes, even the sidewalks.Compared to four years ago, the last time I was in Moscow, the auto problem is out of control.Before, it made some sense to save time by taking a car rather than the subway.Now, that logic doesn’t make any fucking sense.My friend Greg astutely noticed a few months ago, that Moscow had fewer tramways than before.Many of them seemed to have been removed probably due to the increase in car traffic.

To really experience the congestion and to know makes traffic in Moscow more unbearable than from, say, a car addicted place like Los Angeles, is the fact that there are no emission laws here.At least it doesn’t seem like it.More than once have I had a walk spoiled by an inhale of car or truck exhaust.Or worse, riding in a car with your window down is just asking to have car exhaust from a neighboring car to blow into your window.Many Russian big trucks have their exhaust pipes on the side of the truck which blow poison gas out sideways rather than up.

++++++++++

Pimp My Ride just came on Russian MTV.“Pimp my ride” in Russian is pronounced “Tachka na prokachu.”There is nothing special about the Russian version, except that it is apparently really popular..It is just the regular Pimp My Ride dubbed in Russian.The Russians just aren’t as inventive as say the Germans, who have their own version of the show, but it’s called Pimp My Bike.Makes sense since few German youths have cars.

Tonight I’m having dinner with a friend from Illinois.She’s leaving Moscow in a week to go back home.I’ve been honored with meeting her girlfriend, ..An honor I probably shouldn’t take lightly.. (and I use . . because she is pretty closeted) needed a lot of convincing to allow me to meet her girl.When she came out to me, I wasn’t too surprised.My gaydar was on a medium buzz around her already.What I was a bit surprised by was her hesitance to be “out” to many of her friends and colleagues.I understand being in the closet to family, but to friends and colleagues?After she explained it to me, I understood.After all, who am I to tell a gay person how they should publicly handle their gayness.I don’t have to worry about any possible “repercussions.”E explained that the reason why she isn’t out at school isn’t because she’s afraid of any discrimination.Academia is filled with enough gays for it not to be a problem.What she feared is that if she was out, people would only view her as a lesbian.Her homosexuality would become the center of her life, whether she wanted it to be or not.Her identity would be reduced to a singularity determined by what gender she likes to fuck.Her sexuality would become the alpha and omega of her being not because she expresses herself that way.No.Because people, even good tolerant liberals, have a tendency first reify and then ascribe identity, whether it be race, gender, or sexuality, onto that person.Such is the dialectic of identity politics: our identity is reduced to this or that, black or white, straight or gay, etc.There is rarely any room for hybridity, let alone play of subjectivity.And people say Michel Foucault was wrong when he spoke to sexuality and the productive discourses around it.

Speaking of Foucault, the conservative online newsletter Human Events just published its “10 Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.”Foucault’s Madness and Civilization only got an honorable dangerous mention.The 10 Most Harmful Books according to Human Events are:

Not bad for a newsletter that features the rhetorical Manichaeism of Anne Coulter and the conservative crust of Robert Novak.Not surprising either.Notice how if you remove Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all the books deal with liberalism, sex, feminism, or anti-capitalism.It is clear that Nietzsche only makes the list because of the Nazi “affinity” for his philosophy.To think that such reductions of great thinkers of the modern era would be old hat by now.

The list makes me wonder about a few things.First, why include Hitler at all.Given the general trend of the list, it makes me wonder why give das Fuehrer a shout out at all? Clearly the conservative scholars and right wing think tank fellows think that Hitler is just a token evil compared to the real evil words of Karl Marx, Alfred Kinsey, Betty Friedan, and John Dewey.I think Hitler is listed more because to not do so would make the whole list a complete joke.The truth is when tabulating texts that harm, Adolph bring credibility.The fact remains however, that Marx only wrote books and Hitler wrote a book and started a world war, invaded and occupied several countries, and, and was directly responsible for the extermination of 8 million Jews, Slavs, Romi, mentally ill, homosexuals, and others.By placing the Communist Manifesto over Mein Kampf is to suggest that Marx’s text is more horrible that Hitler.

As I wrote that last line I can already hear the conservative response.Yeah Hitler was responsible for a lot of people’s deaths, but compared to killings inspired by Marx’s writings, Hitler pales in comparison.Hence Hitler’s second most harmful and Marx is first.Okay even if I buy this argument, my point isn’t about rehabilitating Marx and further demonizing Hitler anyway.Let’s remove Hitler and Marx from the equation.How the hell can you explain the presence of figures such as Alfred Kinsey, Betty Freidan, Auguste Comte, Jonh Dewey, and John Maynard Keynes?(I leave Mao and Nietzsche out purposely because they can be collapsed into one point for Marx’s team and one point for Hitler’s)?Clearly their sins are liberalism in economics, education, thought, sex, gender.I think that their real ire is not so much directed against the radical left or right, but at the five liberal texts that standout as a bit strange and, frankly, paranoid of the perceived specter that is haunting our present existence: the specter of liberalism.